THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Echolocation is the astonishing debut album from Mendoza Hoff Revels, a formidable new unit led by Ava Mendoza and Devin Hoff, featuring James Brandon Lewis and Ches Smith.
While Mendoza and Hoff have floated around each other’s musical orbits for decades, and have been friends for some time, this is their first work together on record. It is an electric and holy harmonic fusion of highly estimable musical forces; wholly rendered. The original impetus of this group was Mendoza’s, based on the love she and Hoff shared for aggressive and polyglot electric avant-garde ensembles — artists like mid-’80s Black Flag (w/ Kira Roessler and Bill Stevenson) and Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time bands revolutionized the way they heard music. As stated in their liner notes, “we shared the writing of these pieces, though without the sizable stamps of both James and Ches, they would sound nothing like they do here.”
The result? 21st-century progressive rock played by punk rockers with serious improv skills and a deep jazz feel — and vitally, non-stop wicked catchy tunes, riffs and grooves.
Strong sonic references include The Stooges’ Funhouse, rendered by an entire band readily adept at rapidly swinging rhythmic and harmonic shifts (plus tenor sax on every track!) and The Minutemen (both their entire body of music abd their fundamental egalitarian punk ethos). A higher combo accolade to any “rock-adjacent” band playing with electricity cannot be bestowed.
Mendoza is a singular guitarist–composer–songwriter best known for her solo guitar/voice performances and as leader of experimental rock band Unnatural Ways. Over the past decade, her prodigious and long-honed six-string skills have illuminated numerous projects, very recently Bill Orcutt’s Guitar Quartet and William Parker’s Mayan Space Station. Fellow master guitarist Marc Ribot wrote of Ava’s work, “beautiful, powerful and highly original — a new sound, a new voice.”
Hoff is a bassist–composer–arranger who has worked extensively with creative musicians and bands spanning genres and generations, including Sharon Van Etten, Julia Holter, Nels Cline and Yoko Ono. Hoff has appeared on over 100 records and performed at major rock and jazz rock festivals across five continents. Devin’s Solo Bass is on record as being one of Laurie Anderson’s top 5 albums of all time.
Lewis is a tremendously gifted tenor saxophonist–composer, with a wide-open mind to the cosmos of music and the ability to give powerful new voice to same. His Red Lily Quintet’s Jesup Wagon swept the No. 1 slot in all major U.S. jazz critics polls in 2022. Its followup, For Mahalia, With Love, arrived in September 2023.
Smith’s exceptionally deep and distinctive gifts on all manner of percussion have led to great work together with Tim Berne, John Zorn, Darius Jones, and others. Among his own creations as a leader is the remarkably beautiful Path of Seven Colors, a bountiful fruit of his devout study of Haiti’s Vodou musical traditions.
Echolocation was recorded by Jim Clouse at Park West Studios and then masterfully mixed by John Dieterich of Deerhoof.”
